Six billboards from the series ‘Wish You Were Gay’ by Anne Imhof were partially torn by vandals in Austria.
The billboards were displayed in the city of Bregenz and served as companion pieces to an ongoing museum at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, also titled ‘WISH YOU WERE GAY’. On Tuesday, unknown miscreants vandalized six of those billboards.
Anne Imhof took to Instagram to react to the incident. Speaking of the billboards, she called them “a testament to the beauty and strength that the chosen family provides to those of LGBTQIA2S+ experience. On the other hand, Wish You Were Gay also bears witness to the deep struggle and hostility facing LGBTQIA2S+ people everyday, everywhere.” She further wrote about the act itself: “Destroying them is not only an assault on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, two spirit and questioning people, but is an assault on the community of Bregenz.” Calling it a hate crime, she assured that the billboards would be soon replaced (though she did not give a timeline on the same).
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Anne Imhof is best known for winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of 2017 for her work in the German pavilion. In the current exhibition, Imhof strayed from her usual performance art pieces and instead included a lot of paintings, videos, and installations. Many of the paintings are new, with titles similar to “wish you were gay”. Thomas D. Trummer, director of Kunsthaus Bregenz, also denounced the vandalism: “This is a cowardly attack on art and on human rights. Homophobia has no place in our society.”